Do you have an SEO strategy for pushing your website to the top of the search engines?
In addition to creating high-quality content, it’s imperative to focus some time and energy on a savvy link building strategy.
Whether you’re guest posting on other websites or stealing your competitors’ backlinks, you need a game plan.
On the plus side, the more content that you create, the greater chance there is that you will naturally receive incoming links. Conversely, there is no guarantee that this will generate the results that you are chasing.
Gone are the days when you could build low-quality backlinks to your website as a means of boosting your website rankings. Do this today and you’ll end up causing more harm than good to your SEO strategy
Since incoming links remain a top search engine ranking factor, now’s the time to implement a building strategy that you can trust.
What’s the best approach for this link building strategy? This depends on the type of website you have, the strategy that you are using and your overall view on SEO.
Regardless of where you stand, it’s important to spend time learning more about the many backlink tools that are helping other marketing professionals generate positive results for their search engine rankings.
Below, you’ll find a list of 11 tools that can help your building strategy. When used the right way, one or more of these could have a big impact on your web site’s rankings.
1. Ubersuggest
Backlinks remain one of the most critical parts of Google’s algorithm. So, if your competitors have more high-quality links than you, they’re in better position to beat you to the top of the search results.
With Ubersuggest, you gain access to backlink data for your competitors, allowing you to better understand their link profile while targeting the same links. Here’s what you need to do.
Step #1: Enter Your Competitor’s Domain and Click Search
Step #2: Click Backlinks in the Left Sidebar
Step #3. Review the Overview
All three of these numbers are an important part of a site’s ability to rank high in the search engines:
- Domain score – overall strength of the website, ranging from 1 (low) to 100 (high)
- Backlinks – number of incoming backlinks from other sites
- Referring domains – number of unique domains linking to the site
Step #4: Scroll Down to Backlinks
While the above information helps you better understand the health of the website, it’s this step that you’ll use to actually gain more backlinks.
These results show the following:
- Source page title and URL – the title that shows up in a Google search for the URL, along with the URL itself
- Domain score – overall strength of the website, ranging from 1 (low) to 100 (high)
- Page score – overall strength of the URL, ranging from 1 (low) to 100 (high)
- Link type – whether the link is text or image-based
- Anchor text – clickable text in a hyperlink
- First seen – first time Ubersuggest’s robots identified the backlink
- Last seen – last time Ubersuggest’s robots confirmed the backlink
Use this information to secure the same links as your competitors. For example, in the final row above, there’s a link from Namecheap to your competitor’s home page. With a domain score of 100, this would be an excellent link to pick up.
2. Check My Links
As a Google Chrome extension, this is one of the easiest to use backlink tools for SEO strategy.
One of the best ways to generate high quality incoming links is to pinpoint broken links on other web sites, reach out to the appropriate party and suggest that it be replaced with one to your site.
Check My Links allows you to speed up the process by working as a backlink checker. With the extension enabled, you can quickly so a backlink check on a webpage. While most will show up as green, or active, some will be displayed red. These are the broken external links. These are the ones that provide you with an opportunity to improve your own link popularity.
Broken link building may not be a strategy you have used in the past, but, with this simple backlink tool, you can easily implement it in the future.
3. Broken Link Builder
If you don’t want to use backlink tools like the Check My Links Google Chrome extension, you have another option: Broken Link Builder.
With this backlink checker tool, you aren’t forced to search for broken incoming links one page at a time. Instead, it searches the web on your behalf, helping you uncover broken links within a matter of seconds and delivers the search results to you.
Once you have a list of broken links, it’s time to get to work building your own link popularity. You can begin the outreach process, hoping to get in touch with the person who is responsible for swapping out the broken link for one that is even better. If things work in your favor, this link will now point to your web site. In just a few steps you have improved your link building strategy.
Getting started is a simple three step process:
- Use the backlink check tool to find broken links related to your subject matter.
- Choose pages that you can recreate or those that have content related to what you already have on your website.
- Reach out to site owners, tell them about the broken incoming link and suggest that they link to your content.
In an overall sense, Broken Link Builder does two things:
- Saves you time.
- Helps you find opportunities to build your own link popularity.
As a marketing professional, both of these things should be important to you.
4. Linkbird
In many ways, Linkbird is a do-it-all SEO tool. While many of its features are slanted towards link building strategy, you can also use it to:
- Analyze your backlink popularity and profile
- Track your rankings
- Conduct keyword research for search engine optimization
The one thing I really like about this SEO software and backlink tool is how you can easily integrate link building with your content marketing strategy and search engine optimization. Since they go hand-in-hand, this is a benefit that is not to be overlooked.
Othhigh-levelvel features of Linkbird include:
- Ability to locate websites for high-quality incoming links.
- Uncover your competition’s backlinks, allowing you to chase after the same links.
- Integration with an email ticket system, which helps with the outreach process.
Last, but certainly not least, this backlink tool has a team member collaboration feature. This is perfect for companies in which more than one person is responsible for marketing and link building strategy. By keeping everyone on the same page, wasted time is kept to a minimum.
When you use Linkbird, link building and content marketing come together in perfect harmony. From an SEO perspective, this is a big deal.
5. Pitchbox
When it comes to link prospecting and outreach, there aren’t many backlink tools with as much power and as many features as Pitchbox.
Here is how the company describes itself:
“Pitchbox automates the grunt work so you can focus on what you do best: creating real, person-to-person connections with the people you want to reach.”
If you are serious about your link building strategy and taking your brand to the next level, Pitchbox is a backlink tool that you should access regularly.
Outreach is the name of the game, when it comes to building the highest quality natural links. With this tool, you can find targeted opportunities based on your search preferences. Also included is the contact information and social profiles for each prospect.
But, Pitchbox takes things one step further, by providing an automated follow-up feature. This gives you the opportunity to stay in touch with incoming link prospects, even when you don’t have the time to do so.
Finally, its Intelligent Templates ensure that your outreach stands out from the crowd. You don’t want your email to be buried. You want it to be taken seriously. Through the use of a well organized template, you can personalize each outreach making it a game changer for a sophisticated building strategy.
Pitchbox provides a variety of high level features, all without bogging you down with needless details. This is a big plus for anybody looking to build links in an efficient manner.
6. Whitespark
There is more to local SEO than meets the eye. If you are interested in ranking for local search terms, using the SEO tool Whitespark would be in your best interest.
An example of this would be the search phrase “Pittsburgh florists.” This turns up the following in Google:
This is in contrast to a general search for “florists” or a related term.
Whitespark is built as a local SEO tool. Here is what it can do for you:
“Use the link prospector to quickly and easily find link opportunities for guest blogging, niche directories, link pages, sponsorships, and more.”
As you search for NAP citations, you’ll find that this SEO tool is your best friend. It saves you time, helps you narrow your focus and gives you the information that you need to reverse engineer your competition’s citations.
Whitespark checker tool helps you find these types of opportunities:
- Guest posting
- Reviews
- Donations
- Directories
- Professional organizations
All of these opportunities put you in position to build high quality backlinks to your site, with the intention of improving your link popularity and rankings for local terms.
You can use Whitespark on a broad scale, but it’s best for those who are focused on local results.
7. Monitor Backlinks
This isn’t one of your traditional backlink tools, but it’s one that you definitely need to use on a regular basis.
Here are a few things that Monitor Backlinks can do for you:
- Provide information on every new backlink.
- Provide information related to keyword rankings and site speed.
- Send alerts when a competitor obtains a new link.
If you want to use this tool for your link building strategy, it’s that last point that you should pay attention to.
The first thing that you want to do is set up your competitors, through the dashboard. From there, you should pay close attention to every new incoming link that your competition receives. This will give you a better understanding of their link building strategy, while also putting you in position to match them link for link.
If you think your website is worthy of the same link, you are now in position to quickly reach out and strike up a conversation. With the right link building strategy yourself, you may be able to have your competitor’s backlink replaced with one to your website.
Another thing I like about this backlink tool is its SEO metrics. This allows you to learn more about each backlink, including:
- Link status
- Anchor texts
- MozRank
- IP host detection
- External link count
- Social shares
The name of this backlink tool says it all. If you need help monitoring your backlinks, as well as what your competition is doing, Monitor Backlinks has you covered.
8. Linkstant
Link building comes down to one thing: generating as many high quality natural links as possible. Although quality is more important than quantity, that doesn’t mean that you don’t want to know when you secure a new incoming link.
Linkstant was built on the premise that you want to know about every new backlink to your website. With one of these backlink tools, you will find out about every link, right now, not later.
There is no more manual process for pinpointing new backlinks than with this backlink tool Best yet, you don’t have to wait days or even months to find out about your new backlinks.
Here are some of the many benefits of using Linkstant:
- It keeps you motivated, as there is nothing more exciting than realizing that you secured a quality and free backlink.
- You can see who is most interested in your website and content, leveraging this for future benefits.
- You can see why others are linking to your website, either for good or bad reasons. If the link is associated with a negative review, you can take immediate action.
Linkstant can’t be directly attributed to building new links, but it indirectly helps your building strategy in a number of ways.
For example, you may find that a particular blog post is receiving a lot of attention. As it generates link after link, you shouldn’t sit back and let things happen. Once you know a post is hot, you can milk the link popularity for everything it’s worth, such as by promoting it on Facebook.
(Screenshot courtesy of Backlinko)
9. Linkody
Linkody, much the same as Linkstant, provides a variety of backlink check tools to better understand your backlinks. It also gives you a clear overview of what your competition is up to, in regards to their link building strategy.
One of the top features of Linkody is its ability to email you when a competitor gets a new backlink. This alert should put you on your toes, meaning that you want to chase after the same link in an attempt to keep pace.
You can also use Linkody to review your competitor’s entire backlink profile:
With this, you are provided the following information:
- Number of links
- When each link was discovered
- Where the URL is coming from
- Anchor text
- Moz Domain Authority
- IP
- TLD
- EFL
All of these details can help you better understand your competition. If you aren’t outranking a competitor, you may not have to look any further than their backlink profile to understand why.
Linkody has divided its link building process into three phases:
- Locating and monitoring backlinks.
- Assessing backlinks through advanced metrics.
- Reviewing your competitors’ backlink strategy (to make yours better).
With this three step approach, you can use one of the backlink tools like Linkody to better understand your competition and power your link building to the next level.
10. GroupHigh
“Find the best bloggers and influencers, manage your relationships, and measure the value of your content.”
That’s how GroupHigh describes itself, and I couldn’t have said it any better myself.
Using GroupHigh is not as simple as some other backlink tools, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There is a reason for this: it has more features than the rest.
Getting started means entering a few keywords based on your industry. So, if you are in the automotive space, you may opt for keywords such as: new cars for sale, used cars for sale, car reviews and the like.
Once your results are returned, you can filter by the last post date and Domain Authority. This ensures two things:
- You are reaching out to active blogs.
- You are only considering blogs with a strong reputation.
Another thing you will like about a backlink check tool like GroupHigh is the ability to track your results directly from the dashboard. This gives you a clear idea of what’s working, what’s not and how you can adjust your approach in the future.
In regards to SEO, free backlink building and social analytics, you won’t find a checker tool that pulls together more information than this one.
11. BuzzStream
“Outreach” is a buzzword that continues to pick up steam with each passing day. In the SEO world, this is nothing more than connecting with website owners to offer something of value in return for a free backlink.
With BuzzStream, you can streamline the often challenging process of email outreach.
Here’s what BuzzStream has to say about its link building features:
“Keep your link development projects on track – and see where every campaign’s at with a touch of a button. Set reminders to follow up, track campaign progress, and share tasks with your team – so you work like a well-oiled machine.”
How many times have you sent out an email and then forgot all about it? If you follow this path in the future, you’ll continue to waste time and money.
Using BuzzStream improves your process, saves you time and allows you to generate the best possible results.
You shouldn’t expect every email to generate a positive response, but the more that you send, the greater chance you have of making a connection. Using BuzzStream takes all of the stress out of this process.
Conclusion
SEO doesn’t have to be as complicated as it sounds. It can be simple, if you dedicate yourself to creating the best content in your niche and avoiding spammy SEO tactics.
There are tools for everything from social media marketing to conversion rate optimization.
In this post, we discussed 10 top tools for getting you more free backlinks. You may not use all of these tools, but it only takes one to have a positive impact.
Have you had success with any of these link building tools? Would you add any others to the list?
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